The fans didn’t, and neither could Jorja Fox, who’s reprising the role in CSI

YOU know how entwined the character you play on screen is to your real life when die-hard fans raised enough money to fly banner-bearing planes over a television network demanding to keep your character from leaving.

Or when your name is Jorja Fox and a silly reporter (that would be me) greets you over the phone with an unthinking “Hi, Sara! How are you?”

The 42-year-old actress, laughing after this embarrassed reporter realised her fumble, said: “It’s okay! A lot of people do that.”

Fox reprises her fan-favourite role as moody, no-nonsense forensic scientist Sara Sidle on the popular crime series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s 10th season after more than a year’s break.

“I felt bad,” she told Today of her departure. “People were showing support, but it was actually my fault that I was leaving. I had made the decision and it was a hard one to make.

“I left CSI because I was exhausted and I wanted to take some time off. I was literally crying, but I said to the executive producer, Carol Mendelsohn, ‘I’d love to visit sometime,’” Fox said about her controversial and abrupt departure. “I never thought they would ever call again!”

And it seems after playing a character for 10 years, it really is hard to completely get away from her - even with a self-imposed break to write, travel and produce a play.

“I’ll go shopping and I’ll buy a shirt, or a skirt, and I’ll look at it six months later and think, ‘Who bought that skirt?’

“And it’ll be something that I might have bought when I was Sara, for sure,” Fox revealed.

She revealed that there are many similarities between her and Sara - and that the two “absolutely” rub off each other.

“I really like Sara, so that’s been really good. If you’re going to play the same character for 10 years, it helps so much if you actually like the character, or if you have small things in common.

“I hope that little things of her have rubbed off on me. She’s very brave, she’s much smarter than I am, more serious and more focused.

“Sometimes I just go to work, and I put on the jacket and I feel like I’m her. I’ve never experienced that as an actor before - it being so seamless and easy to become someone else.”

So, has she been keeping up with the crime lab shenanigans?

“For a little while I followed the show until William Petersen’s character (Gil Grissom) left. I knew he was leaving and I wanted to see how that played out.

“After that I actually forced myself not to watch, because I thought that if I were to really take a break from the show, I shouldn’t be watching it. So I got very behind,” she said, laughing.

And as much as she misses Peterson, whom she gets along marvellously with, Fox was excited to return.

“In some ways, it was like being with old friends that you hadn’t seen in a long time, and in other ways it was brand new,” she said.

“But I was so slow. Things we had done for years, like putting on gloves and doing scientific experiments - they had to show me how to do the steps all over again.

“It was like I was the new person making the day take longer. I kept making simple mistakes that I’d never made before.

“I have a whole other level of admiration and respect for my co-workers, for those tiny skills that they have. Just being able to put on their rubber gloves at the right time so that the rest of the scene goes smoothly is a crazy skill.”